Gaming machines generally require the player to place or make a wager to activate the primary game of chance. In many of these gaming machines, the award is based on the player obtaining a winning symbol or symbol combination and on the amount of the wager (e.g., the higher the wager, the higher the award). Generally, symbols or symbol combinations which are less likely to occur usually provide higher awards and/or allow the player to play a bonus game.
The bonus games usually provide an additional award to the player. The bonus games usually do not require an additional wager by the player to be activated and may generally be activated by a triggering symbol or combination played in the primary game of chance. When a bonus game is triggered, the gaming machine generally indicates this to the player through one or more visual and/or audio output devices, such as reels, lights, speakers, video screens, and the like.
In the recent years, casino games where multiple players sharing a bonus game were also introduced. Typically, five to eight slot machines surround a shared bonus screen. When the bonus game is triggered, and one or more players may optionally participate in the bonus game. However, the bonus game is short in duration (typically well less than half a minute), all eligible players must be there at the same time to participate, and the passive player(s) do not interact with each other—or with the bonus game. Thus, these group-like bonus games are solitary individual bonus games that are just happened to be played on a common platform. Without interaction with the bonus game, without interaction between players, with the brief nature of the group bonus game, and with the small number of players in a group participating simultaneously, the group-like bonus game offers no additional benefit and improvement over the single player bonus game. In fact, given an opt-in choice to participate in the group-like bonus game, eligible players normally opt-out and wait their turn so that they can play the bonus game by themselves. This defeats the purpose of the group game environment.